This iceberg is about twice the size of Manhattan but approximately half the size of the previous recent break-off in 2010 (blog post here). Unlike the 2010 event the current ice has broke off further up glacier and marks a retreat of the calving front of the glacier. The crack and rift that led to this break off has been known and observed for some time and so this event was expected in this regards. However, the question is still being asked as to how unusual these large calving events are and whether they were caused by climate change. Certainly we can say that these changes have not been seen for at least a 150 years (see previous post and this discussion article). However, we can’t say for certain that these two massive calving event are a direct result of climate change. An interesting discussion on these questions is provided in this BBC article.

The Guardian has a little interactive page where you can watch the iceberg break off in context (click here).

Apparently my Royal Society article of last year was the journals (Proceeding A) most cited paper of 2011 and the 8th most downloaded. The illustrious top-ten are listed here: http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.org/site/misc/top_ten.xhtml Anyway the prize for this accomplishment is that the complete article is freely available online through 2012 (i.e. no journal pay-wall). So please go ahead and have a look – download and cite the paper some more!

Jorge Montt Glacier has been called the fastest shrinking glacier in Chile. A retreat of ~1km was observed in just one year, this was recorded by time-lapsed cameras. The series of 1445 photos have been used to produce a short video (shown below) of the glacier’s retreat.

Frozen Planet, BBCs new landmark natural history seven part TV series on the frozen wildernesses of the Arctic and Antarctic, has just finished showing in the UK. The last episode includes some spectacular location footage of the research project I’m involved in. This includes watching my boss, Alun Hubbard, abseil down a moulin into the depths of the Greenland Ice Sheet (see here).

The footage covers the drainage of a meltwater lake as it gushes down glacier incising channels into the ice before descending down a moulin (vertical shaft) through a kilometer of ice to the bed. My own involvement in the research project is to model the effects this water has on the flow of the overlying ice. Check out our new website to learn more:

A series of close-up photos of this huge ice chunk taken in August 2011 can be viewed here. Currently the ice island is located off the coast of Newfoundland, as seen in July from this satellite image, and reported in this CBC new article.

Updates on the progress of the ice island can be tracked from the Environment Canada webpage.

The drifting ice island originated from the Petermann Glacier in Northwest Greenland breaking off as a giant iceberg of unprecedented size (five times the size of Manhattan Island) on August 5, 2010 (see satellite images here). The Petermann Glacier drains about 6% of the Greenland ice sheet. Previously this ice-front had a relatively stable position, but recent environmental changes raise questions about the possible further retreat of the ice-tongue and the knock-on contributions to sea-level rise. See this article for more context and scientific insight.